Monday, October 13, 2008

He is one of us, I immediately thought when I first saw him. Another oddball. My it-takes-one-to-know-one radar automatically detected that he is a kindred spirit like the crazy couple I wrote about before. I see him day after day sitting at the same spot (the front stairs of an abandoned two-storey store building) with a backpack by his side and wearing the same clothes (a once light colored t-shirt now turned black from sweat and grime paired with dark colored cutoffs and slippers). Most of the time he just sits there, quietly observing the people passing by; but at times I’d see him scribbling intensely on a small notepad. What could he be writing about, I asked myself? Must be a journal or something. One time I even caught him talking to somebody on what looks like a phone. But when I looked closer, I saw that what he’s using for a phone is a calculator! Well, they look and feel the same, anyway.

Expecting him to always be there, it bothered me a bit when I didn’t see him today. I walked home for lunch and he’s not there! Where could he possibly be? What could have happened to him? I pondered. Forever obsessed with ritual and order, I have this neurotic belief that people—even crazy ones—always act within a defined set of expectations only to realize, yet again, that they don’t.